The Edger Collection

by David Beem

  Waves of nausea roll in with her words. I grab the kitchen island.

  “Edger?”

  No, no. Focus on something else. Anything. Kissing on the beach, favorite movies, Gran and Shep—each image dissolves into silent mindless babies lying in their cribs. Do they even cry?

  “Are you okay? You look like you’re going to get sick.”

  “If we keep talking about this, I am.”

  I press my back against the wall and slide to the floor. A hot green aura latches on to me and seeps into my pores, and Dad hurries into my consciousness, washes the nausea out, and replaces it with his strength.

  Thank you.

  You’ll get through this, son.

  Mary squats next to me by the wall.

  “I get it now.” I slide the rest of the way to the floor and stretch my legs. “I get what’s at stake.”

  She sits also and folds her legs. Wendy, wagging her tail, joins us and lies down. For a long moment, we just stare off into space.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Not your fault.”

  “No. I’m sorry this is happening.” She rests her head on my shoulder, and I breathe her in. Lavender, perspiration, and campfire smoke. “The first time I killed someone, the first time it was really me, I worried it’d turn me into her.” Her head comes up, and I meet her sapphire-blue gaze.

  “Why didn’t it?”

  “It’s something I battle every day. I know these clones. I mean, I know their original.”

  “Seuss?”

  She nods. “He was kind to me. A mentor. I thought he was eccentric. I knew he was cloning himself. I didn’t like it. But you can look past things when you’re little. Every time I kill a clone, I think of him. It’s a darkness in me that’ll grow, if I let it.” She releases a sigh. “Being with you makes it easier. You give me a little more faith in myself, I guess. It’s why I need you.”

  “To keep you in the light side of the Force? Mary, you do that yourself.”

  “And so will you, if you do this. You’re stronger than you know. Edger, if you don’t have faith in yourself, trust my faith in you.”

  HISTORICAL GLOWERING AND A BIT OF HANKERING FOR A PB&J ON WHITE AS CHRONICLED BY HERODOTUS (C. 484—C. 425 BCE)

  Frozen like gargoyles, with necks slung low and half-moon eyes peering into souls the way psychic tax audits do, the seagulls sitting on the concrete Ready Lane walls are no mere amateurs. In fact, these are the crème de la crème of glowerers. They have the zombies in a state of total mental discombobulation. And no wonder. If the Harvard School of Glowering had been a real thing, any one of these seagulls could’ve pecked out the curriculum. And this is a natural talent having nothing to do with the nano-artificial intelligence upgrades they’d each been given. What’s more, the seagulls outnumber the zombies. This means they get to double up, triple up, or, in some cases, quadruple up their glowering efforts. It is by no means a fair fight.

  As a thought exercise, imagine each bird’s face Photoshopped onto Floyd Mayweather’s boxing glove, and that boxing glove is coming at you. A single punch would knock out any normal, untrained mortal. Except now that boxing glove is coming at you with the force of four glowering seagull faces per punch, and you’re like, holy crap, what is even happening to me right now?

  This is not far off from what it’s like.

  Such is their glower power, Tony Hawk has peed six separate times in five minutes. (And this is in no way due to incontinence issues or anything like that.[12]) Not since 1601, when Lord Essex let one rip at the climax of Queen Elizabeth I’s famous “Golden Speech” has the world seen such impressive glowering.

  Yet, there is one seagull who isn’t glowering.

  Her name is Karen.

  Karen wants the sandwich.

  Karen’s head tilts, and the trembling hand she’s been glowering at drops the PB&J, recoils, and then hastens to roll up the window. She knows she’s off task, and she hates to disappoint her colleagues, let alone their human caretakers. She loves her job. She appreciates being part of such an elite workforce. She really feels they’re making a positive difference in this fish-eat-fish world. What’s more, she’d like to one day open a sandwich shop of her own.

  But this sandwich is nigh irresistible.

  Premium Italian white bread.

  Basil Berry jelly.

  Ooh… And the peanut butter looks so, so creamy.

  Daryl, the bird next to Karen, nudges her with his wing. It is a testament to their discipline neither one of them moves their heads. But her eyes… Oh, her eyes are making sweet, sweet, culinary love to that filthy, dirty sandwich of the night.

  Meh. It’ll go straight to her hips. She knows. White bread is the antinutritional value… But a rose by any other name wouldn’t smell as sweet. Especially if that rose smelled like wheat bread. Because wheat bread tastes like bird seed, and no self-respecting Long Beach bird would settle for bird seed when it could have Peruvian street food, Singaporean, Moroccan, Ethiopian, or even an In-N-Out Burger. The point is Long Beach has come up a bit since her childhood, when Saturday mornings meant dive-bombing screaming human children on checkered picnic blankets. And while this gentrification did mature her palate into the sophisticated foodie she is today—

  Daryl nudges her again. Her fluttering avian heart beats faster. What is she doing? She is a lieutenant in an elite squadron. Mufasa is depending on her, as are the rest of the rebels. This could well be the biggest moment in her professional career. Is it really worth risking all of it over some dumb sandwich?

  Daryl opens his beak and trills the opening signal. On the opposite concrete barrier wall, Cindy releases the response signal.

  Come on, Karen! she thinks. Get it together!

  Daryl starts into the electric guitar part. Across the way, Cindy chirps the drums. On Karen’s other side, Brenda chimes in on the bass guitar part.

  Karen closes her eyes and becomes one with the music. She lends her voice to the tapestry by supplying the synthesizer and her pangs of hunger fade. Together, the four seagulls build toward the harmonic goal of the song’s introduction, a return to the tonic chord, and the rest of the squadron joins in. Sarah Bonkovich’s orders had been clear. These stoners had to make it to the pagoda for the final battle. Karen only hopes the one who gave her the sandwich will be clever enough to understand their coded message. But judging by how hard he was huffing that empty whip cream can, their chances seem remote.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Look at it like this,” says Wang, trying a different tack and drilling down on his patience. “Think of it like the Ebola…but with nerves.”

  Hunched over behind the driver’s seat, Consuelo strokes his soul patch. “Like the Ebola…but with…nerves.”

  “That’s right,” replies Wang. “So if one person in the van gets the Ebola, we’re all getting the Ebola.”

  “We’re getting the Ebola now?” asks Shmuel from the back. “Where?”

  The pig oinks, snorts, and squeals. Wang glares. It lies down, issues a tiny squeal, then wriggles its belly on the van floor.

  Wang’s lip curls. “Watch it, pig. You’re running out of variations.”

  “But you haven’t even seen The Birds.” Consuelo thrusts his open palms at Wang. “How can you be jittery over a movie you’ve never even seen?”

  “Because you’ve seen it,” replies Wang. “And your nerves are making me nervous because you won’t stop talking about it.” He shrugs. “And because these birds are acting really weird.”

  “Can we smoke the Ebola?” asks Shmuel. “What’s the Ebola again?”

  “The Birds is a Hitchcock classic,” says Consuelo. “Arguably one of his greatest—”

  “It doesn’t matter!” yells Wang. “You saw the movie, and you’re nervous about it, and even though I haven’t seen the movie, now I’m nervous about it, and then he’s going to be nervous about it, and next thing you know, we’ve all got the Ebola and only one of us has ever seen the fucking
movie!”

  “Being scared doesn’t give you the Ebola!” exclaims Consuelo.

  “It’s a metaphor! I don’t wanna fucking hear anything else about this movie!”

  “All right, all right,” says Consuelo. “But I have to tell you just one more thing.”

  “No, you don’t!”

  “Yes, I do!”

  “No, you don’t!”

  “The birds in The Birds never did a cover to ‘I Ran’ by A Flock of Seagulls,” Consuelo hurries to say. “That is something they did not do.”

  Wang raises his fist and twists in his seat to face Consuelo, still hunched over behind him, but Consuelo touches his ear and points with his other hand at the windshield. Puzzled, Wang lowers his fist and cocks an ear.

  The seagulls singing… Groovy beat. A passable synthesizer impersonation—for birds, that is—and a melody so dopey, it could only have come from the ’80s.

  “Is that what they’re singing?” asks Wang. “‘I Ran’?”

  “Well, it sure ain’t I-raq!” Consuelo beams. He works his way back to his seat, starts to sit, then pops up so fast, he hits his head on the ceiling.

  “What?”

  “I almost sat on Shmuel’s grody Kama Sutra book.”

  “Ew.” Wang’s nose curls. “Shmuel!”

  Shmuel startles, his arms flailing, his body twisting. He falls out of his seat, crabs backward into the back of the van, his eyes wide and his head shaking, no-no-no!

  The pig squeals and lurches left, skating on an assortment of bongs strewn across the floor—

  Consuelo lurches right, trips over the mattress, falls and crushes an empty cardboard box—

  Wang clambers out of the driver’s seat and hunches into the back, raises another fist, and the van goes quiet except for Shmuel’s panting in the corner on top of the mattress.

  “What. The fuck.”

  Shmuel’s eyes still round with terror, his head still shaking no-no-no, he replies, “I had to get out of the way!”

  “Get out of the way,” repeats Wang, deadpan.

  Shmuel swallows, then nods.

  “Out of the way of what?” asks Wang.

  “A car plowed into our living room!” cries Shmuel. “It came right through the wall and everything!”

  Wang, Consuelo, and the pig exchange dumbfounded glances.

  “What?” says Shmuel. “It was terrifying? And I spilled my Cheetos?”

  “That was in 2017,” says Wang. “Holy fuck, you’ve got bad reflexes. Now get up and put your Kama Sutra book away, Hand Solo.”

  A thud issues from the top of the van, and everyone jumps. Another thud issues from the side—and still another from the back door. Wang’s gaze snaps to the front windshield.

  Beating white wings, floating feathers, avian missiles streaking past—

  “The hell?” Wang scrambles into the driver’s seat. Outside, talons clutching tufts of hair, beaks pecking bloodied faces, and zombies tumbling over the concrete barrier walls as they break for cover. He checks the driver’s side mirror: Tony Hawk is swinging his skateboard every which way as two seagulls, one on each side, pants him.

  “Now’s our chance!” Wang’s pulse rises as he turns the key in the ignition.

  Nothing.

  He pumps the gas, tries again.

  Nothing.

  “Just call Danny and Leo!” yells Consuelo. “Call Christine or Ralph! Use the cellphone! Nostradamus already knows we’re here.”

  Wang shakes his head. “Their cellphones won’t be on, dumbass!”

  “Then what do we do now?” asks Consuelo.

  Wang clenches his jaw. He flexes his fingers, then curls them around the steering wheel, clenching until his knuckles turn white.

  “Now…” he says. “We do what we do best.”

  Shmuel, his copy of the Kama Sutra tucked under his arm, raises a finger into the air. He wheels around, drops his book into a cardboard box, and rummages through it, tossing out a wind-up Mickey Mouse action figure, a Tasmanian Devil bobblehead, and a vintage Bionic Man doll. When he spins back again, he’s pulling on a rubber glove and squelching a glob of lube over the fingers.

  “Whoa-whoa-whoa!” yell Consuelo and Wang in unison, cowering with their palms out in the universal sign of holy-hell-please-God-no. The pig dashes under the seat, trembles, and squeals softly.

  “Da fuck are you doing?” asks Wang.

  Shmuel blinks. “What I do best?”

  “No, you fuck!” cries Wang. “We improvise! What we do best is improvise!”

  Shmuel’s eyebrows rise. “Ooh-oh…”

  “Dude.” Consuelo’s hands slowly lower. Facing Wang, he adds, “Never speak of this again.”

  Wang hurriedly nods.

  Shmuel shrugs, then bends again over the cardboard box. He pulls out a roll of paper towels, rips off a wad, and commits to cleaning off the glove. The pig crawls out from under the seat. He pushes his snout into wind-up Mickey, scoots it nearer the box, and then hops over a pile of empty Listerine bottles to reach the back door.

  “Okay, guys.” Wang screws up his courage and peers out the windshield at a seagull break-dance spinning on a zombie’s head. “We’re gonna have to make a break for it.”

  “What?” cries Consuelo. “No! I don’t care how rich your crazy cock temple is going to make us. You’re insane if you think I’m going out there.”

  “Cock block. And this is our opportunity! Look. The zombies are totally incapacitated.”

  “Which is what’ll happen to us!”

  “We could get incapacitated right here?” offers Shmuel, holding up two empty whip cream cans, and the pig’s hooves scrape against the back door.

  “Settle down!” yells Wang. “Now, listen. I know it’s crazy, but I think the song might be a coded message of some kind.”

  The back door unlatches, and the seagulls’ song doubles in volume.

  “Shut the door, shut the door!” yells Wang.

  “Loud noises!” Consuelo scrambles for the door, and the pig hops out. In the side mirror, Wang watches, amazed as it trots along the side of the van without sustaining attack. Ahead, talons shred a shirt; a beak pecks a zombie butt; one rogue seagull is munching on Shmuel’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  The pig marches forward in the newly cleared path as the flock of seagulls sings Flock of Seagulls. One group of birds breaks apart from the rest to form up along the right and left concrete barriers and begin break dancing: the centipede, the wave, the head and back spins.

  “Righteous!” exclaims Consuelo.

  The pig trots forward a few steps, then looks back. Again, his head ticks twice toward the newly cleared path, where there are no zombies.

  “What do you think he’s trying to say?” asks Shmuel.

  “No clue,” Consuelo replies.

  “Dude.” Wang’s eyebrows rise. “Are we high right now?”

  Shmuel smacks himself across the face. “Nope.”

  The pig does the thing with his head again.

  “The birds are definitely trying to communicate,” says Wang. “The question is, why code the message at all? They’re birds. Humans don’t speak bird, let alone coded bird.”

  “Maybe it’s the song?” asks Shmuel. “Maybe there’s a clue in the lyrics?”

  “What? ‘I Ran’? There’s nobody left in the world who knows the lyrics to that song. That was the era of the eight-track!”

  “I know the lyrics,” says Shmuel. “It goes like this: I walk a bong to have a view, I never thought I’d beat a girl like you-oo-oo—”

  “That’s not how it goes,” says Consuelo.

  “Okay, but it’s obvious they want us to run?” says Shmuel.

  “Don’t be stupid,” says Wang. “That’d be too obvious. Anyone could decode that. Even you.”

  The pig does the thing again with his head.

  “Guys,” says Consuelo. “I think that pig wants us to follow him. Even weirder, I think he’s right. I think this is our chance.”
r />   In their headlights’ pool, the pig trots a few steps toward the van, then ticks his head leftward twice, then turns to face the road ahead and trots a few steps forward. He stops, looks at them, and again ticks his head toward the opening the birds have made.

  “I have made a decision,” announces Wang, kicking the driver’s side door open. “I think we should run.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I work the towel over the back of my head and peer through the steam into the slit of the cracked door. Mary’s next to the bed. Her lithe, seductive body seems more naked in that towel than when I saw her without clothes. Her slouching shoulders, the workmanlike way she holds up a shirt and then tosses it aside to inspect the next from the pile. Her somewhat drooping eyes, lack of makeup, not that she ever wears much anyway, but this nakedness isn’t physical. This is her glimpsed from inside the fortress. And now she’s let me in, I never want out.

  I wrap the towel around my waist and push open the door. She lowers the Spice Girls concert tee she’s holding up and faces me.

  “What do you think?” She juts her hip to the side, lays the shirt over her torso, and flicks her arm out flamboyantly.

  “You wanna be Sniper Spice?”

  “Don’t tell me what I want, what I really, really want.”

  I use my surrender hands and cross to the other side of the bed, where all the men’s clothes are laid out.

  “Gives a whole new meaning to mail-order shopping,” I mutter.

  You’re welcome, says Dad. I hope you find something you like. Been a while since I got to give you something. Sorry it’s clothes. Socks. Underwear. Oh, boy.

  Dad, this is great. I’m not five anymore.

  Mary reaches for the holstered gun on top of my pile of clothes and tosses it out of my way onto a pillow.

  “Still can’t believe our luck,” I say, raising my eyebrows at the firearm. “All the houses on the beach we could’ve picked, and you chose the one with a gun stashed in the night table. Fortuitous.”

  “Someone’s looking out for us,” she says, not looking up.